First peek at Nokia Music+ clients for Windows platforms and beyond

Nokia yesterday unveiled an upgrade to its Music service is on the horizon, which would bring more functionality and requested features to consumers who wish a slightly richer experience. What was missing were some screenshots on just how this will look when using an available client.

Nokia has now published a video that runs through some benefits of the new service upgrade, branded Nokia Music+ as well as a quick demo of native Windows and HTML5 clients. We'll be the first to say that it looks like it could go far, especially if the catalogue of music is solid.

Nokia Music as it is right now on Lumia Windows Phones is a handy service, enabling users to access mixes that are provided and updated on a regular basis. While the selection of stations is good, there's definitely room for improvement to further enhance Nokia Music. This is where Music+ is set to come in. While Microsoft has its own Xbox Music subscription, we're pleased to see Nokia take a different approach.

As well as highlights we mentioned yesterday, including unlimited skipping, downloads, higher quality playback and lyrics, Nokia Music+ looks as though it will provide more access for music lovers to mix up genres and more. Artist Mix and Offline Mix both look set to be available, and My Music would make Music+ a full media player experience.

While Nokia looks to release native clients for Windows 8 and RT, as well as Windows Phone, the video also showed off a HTML5 version of Nokia Music+, which is believed to boast similar (if not identical) functionality to the native Windows clients. This will expand availability to cover other platforms.

Check out a quick overview of the service and clients that will be available in the rollout:

Pretty neat, eh? And for just €3.99/$3.99 as a monthly fee, it's not a bad deal. We'll have more information when the service and clients go live in the coming weeks. Sound off your thoughts in the comments.

Dear lord...if Microsoft isn't embarrassed by this, I don't know what they will be by.
Their Xbox Music nightmare is a about to be outdone by its partner. If Nokia comes out with a capable Video program, the people behind Xbox Music and Video should lose their jobs over this. This is comical.

It's not the same functionallity. You can't create your own playlist based on the individual tracks you choose individually. I can go on XBOX Music and download each individual track and build my own playlist or listen to my entire collection. Nokia Music is more like Pandora.

How and why would Microsoft be embarrased by this? Do you have XBOX MUSIC? I don't think you do. You can't compare "Playslists" of music you've probably never heard of to downloading as many songs of the ones you like with XBOX MUSIC. I can play XBOX MUSIC on my Phone, My PC or XBOX. If you have an XBOX you can also listen to most of the music videos on their XBOX MUSIC APP without ads mind you. Plus a lot of the songs are 320kbs vs 256kbs on NOKIA. So, in the end you get what you pay for my friend. And to me, there is no better music service than XBOX MUSIC. There is one thing that I hope they take from NOKIA and that is to add lyrics. Other than that, the big M has everyone beat.

Just search for nokia music unlimited ... It is a service available in india by nokia that enables all the nokia music users to download any song any album anytime without limits ... Yes, no 10 songs per month limit... All for free for the first year and after that its just Rs113 per month that's like just 2$ per month and you get unlimited downloads for the whole month... Maybe nokia can bring that service to other countries too

@missionparta, yes I have. I have all 3104 of my songs on it. Those are songs that are on my Computer. Thank You for asking. I say about 2800 of those are MP3s while the other are WMA. It works fine for me. You can also use your Zune software if you're not happy with your XBOX MUSIC APP. And if you're not happy with those two, there's also windows media player. Still not happy, use Windows media center. In other words, there are many forms of playing the music you downloaded with your XBOX MUSIC PASS.

Lets all agree that music syncing with windoes phone 8 is a disaster, i cant sync music using Zune (had all my music organised in Zune to sync music to my Focus S) now i am suposed to use Xbox Music to sync music which is not available to Windows 7 (Desktop/laptop) users, Microsoft expects me to upgrade to Windows 8 so that i can sync music on my phone is plain stupid, i tried to use WMP to sync music to my Lumia 920, it is buggy it takes for ever for WMP 12 to find the music on my phone, doesnt sync play count or rating, i dont think any one can defend microsoft with respect to syncing music to windows phone 8 devises. doesnt really matter how good Xbox Music pass is, they need to fix how i can listen to my music first.

Well, on the PC all you have to do is have your music in the "MUSIC" library section and it automatically detects it. I do hate the fact that I allowed it to replace my song info and it mislabeled some of my songs. I spent so many hours trying to get that right and it only took an instant for the program to ruin it. I do prefer the Zune software over XBOX MUSIC to manage my music however. XBOX MUSIC I use more just to listen to it. As for the WP8 I've never used it, I'm still with WP7.5

I would like to see how this will look like on rt surface. Xbox music app looks boring and this reminds me of Zune for some reason. I hope I can use the client as a full blow player that can access my music stored on a micro SD.

Can anyone vouch for Nokia Music lately? I found it to be unimpressive when it first came out, compared to Pandora for example. Has it improved much?
The song selections seemed rather generic and didn't mesh as well as Pandora's selections do.

I wouldn't say that the selection is generic, but it can be limiting. You can refresh playlists that you download, and they do legitimately change it up. There is a pretty decent job of offering some lesser-known bands in the playlists I use. However, if you make multiple playlists with bands that are even REMOTELY similar at the same time (meaning similar style, but no common artists between playlists), there will still be a lot of overlapping content between playlists.

That, and the artist selection isn't perfect. One band--Oh, Sleeper--will show up in a playlist that I like, and they are a band that I like. Despite being in playlists, they cannot be chosen when creating a mix, which is an annoyance, to say the least.

So I wouldn't say that song selection is generic AS A WHOLE, but it is generic if you do it all at the same time.

they have a good collection of international music, when i create a music mix with 3 artists half of the music in that mix doesnt belong to the 3 artists, Nokia has lot of work to do on this, but it is a good start.

Will this Nokia Music+ service be available for unlocked Lumia 920 as well in any location? Currently, Nokia Music service cannot be accessed on the unlocked Lumia 920 here in Mumbai, India (this phone is purchased from outside India). Any thots?..thanks.

What exactly is the problem that u are facing?... For starters go to settings n create a nokia music account and activate ur subscription , if that is not possible on ur phone goto music.nokia.com and create a nokia account and then sign in with that account on ur lumia in nokia misic settings...

Thanks for your feedback. But, even after doing all that, the store, gig and mix music options are not visible in the Nokia Music app. As such, I am not able to download any music at all!..any suggestions?

I think the problem is your phone is from another country and ur sim is an indian sim so maybe nokia is unable to process that whole nokia music unlimited on your phone and as your phone doesn't come under nokia India warranty u wont get any help from the nokia care guys too.... So only viable option i see is if u can flash the indian firmware onto it so maybe you can use it ...

Cool that you are showing one of those ASUS Q200's...I recently sold my Surface for one and I am loving it...
Anyway, I want XBOX music to succeed...My music world is kind of in disarray right now because I am trying to still keep my Zune until they fix the "alpha" program with XBOX Music. I may always hold on to my Zune since it was a 64 bit model and I can have ALL of my music, all the time...but I really want XBOX Music to soar...

From what's on the article, doesn't look like you'll be able to download specific songs/artists, only mixed radios (mix of different songs) so it is not same service as Xbox or spotify...yes its cheaper but not exactly the same service....

I don't understand music+.. How is this any different than the just 'music' offered by Nokia. I am using an,indian 920.. And well i can download any song for offline use.. Sure i am restricted to 4 mixes..but i have unlimited songs and album download..
Am i missing something here?? What exactly is new with subscription??